The GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning ancestral research in Britain, Ireland, and their diasporas, from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit The GENES Blog if you do so. To contact me please email chrismpaton @ outlook.com.

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Thursday, 8 May 2014

Integrated Census Microdata Project now online

The Department of History at the University of Essex, using census data from FindmyPast, has uploaded a new database online entitled the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project. The project allows users to obtain statistical information from the censuses from England and Wales from 1851-1861 and 1881-1911, and Scotland from 1851-1901. I've no idea why 1871 is missing from England and Wales, though FindmyPast does not host the 1911 Scottish census, explaining that one. I suspect 1841 has been omitted due to the vague answers required e.g. ages within 5 year ranges and of this parish or not of this parish as required birthplace information.

The project is outlined at http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/research/icem/default.htm whilst the database itself is accessible at http://icem.data-archive.ac.uk/#step1. It's another one of these sites that requires constant filtering, so be patient, but the data presented is fascinating - for example, in 1891, some 88 people only claimed to be monoglot Gaelic speakers in Glasgow, 12,513 claimed to have both Gaelic and English, and 557,182 had only English - whilst one person had Yiddish only, and one was bilingual between English and Welsh!

A detailed user guide is available at http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/research/ICeM/documents/icem_guide.pdf - the project does not seem to be complete - I can't find the Western Isles for example, included, but that may be to do with the project methodology, and how the data has been presented, so I will keep looking. Nevertheless, a very useful tool.